Weekly MaxWellness - 9/5

What you need to know this week in the world of wellness, compiled by our in-house mobile wellness geek extraordinaire, Taylor Pechacek. If you want this automatically delivered to your email address once a week, go ahead and subscribe here.

The second quarter of the year is oftentimes a slow one as the summer months approach, but Q2 2014 was surprisingly busy for digital health on all fronts. Investment dollars are up. FDA clearances averaged two per month and a surprising FDA deregulation proposal dropped during the quarter, too. M&A was even stronger than it was in Q1, which was already a record quarter for such deals.

Wearable computing will fundamentally change the user experience. Future wearable apps will become more anticipatory and less user initiated. Rather than requiring input from users, these wearable apps will be aware of situations and states, presenting contextually useful and timely piece of information, in the least intrusive manner.

Thirty years ago at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts, a roomy auditorium in Cupertino, Calif., Steven P. Jobs introduced the original Macintosh. On Tuesday, Apple will return to the center to unveil a set of long-anticipated products: two iPhones with larger screens and a wearable computer that the media has nicknamed the iWatch.

This growth, ABI said, is in part a result of providers who are more aware of the benefits remote patient monitoring wearable devices can provide to patients outside of the hospital. ABI adds that because of the growing interest in these devices, there’s a bigger opportunity for platforms that collect data from several devices and apps, for example Apple’s HealthKit.

Apple recently updated its terms and conditions for developers working with its HealthKit API to integrate health and fitness data aggregated by the platform from various third party apps and their companion devices. Earlier this week the company’s rule against selling health data collected via HealthKit to ad platforms and other data collection entities, but Apple’s rules for HealthKit developers includes eight big ones.

The finalists have been announced for the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, lowering the field from 22 companies that had not yet dropped out to just 10 that will compete for the $10 million prize in a series of hands-on trials of their handheld, smartphone-connected diagnostic devices designed for consumer use.

Venture capital firms and portfolio managers of large mutual funds are among those investing in companies that gather and analyze healthcare data, all in hopes of tapping into the shift to electronic record keeping and consumer acceptance of personal health tracking devices. Unlike biotechnology firms, which are often hit-or-miss based on the success of drugs under development, investors say these health technology firms tend to have a reliable path to profits by selling services and data to insurance companies, doctors and hospitals.

Your company is probably made up of very different types of people. A suburb-dwelling mother of three, for example, lives a vastly different lifestyle from a 24-year-old single man who lives a few blocks from your office. So shouldn't they have access to benefits tailored to their unique needs?